


Pathopoela

by o0whitelily0o



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 12:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0whitelily0o/pseuds/o0whitelily0o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meenah never meant anything seriously, so why should her 'I love you's be any different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pathopoela

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NancyHartigan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyHartigan/gifts).



> Since we don't know Meenah or Aranea's Trollian handles, I just used the same letters as Feferi and Vriska for their pesterlog, respectively. Just wanted to clear that up!

The first time Meenah told Aranea she loved her, it was over Trollian when they were both four sweeps old.

CC: UG)( zahhak keeps trolling me  
CC: complainin about his dumb relationship drama  
CC: who even gives a ship about who he’s flushed for  
CC: EVERYONE WE KNOW IS TERRIBUBBLE SO JUST CLAM UP ALREADY  
AG: Yes, I certainly understand.   
AG: It can get very frustrating at times trying to juggle everyone’s hang-ups and keep the order.  
AG: Really, with friends like ours’, who needs anemones?  
CC: 38O  
CC: omg  
CC: serket did you seariously just  
CC: omg i love you 38D

Aranea hadn’t thought much of it at the time. It had taken her aback for a second- Meenah was always so cagey about whether they were hatefriends or friend-friends, even though it had been nearly half a sweep since they first met- but then she just moved past it. It was just her joking around, nothing to get all worked up over. So she chose not to acknowledge it, instead moving the conversation on to another topic- the Empress- and sat back as Meenah unleashed a new wave of complaints on her.

But it was still nice, she thought later on, to hear someone say something like that to her, even if they just meant it as a joke.

\---

The second time Meenah said it was the night before she ran away to the moon. She had come to visit Aranea at her house for the first time, as a good-bye present she had said. Aranea tried to talk her out of it, but she absolutely would not budge.

“I’m sick and tired of it, Serket.” She had whined, laying back dramatically as they sat on the roof of Aranea’s hive. “I don’t wanna spend my whole glubbing life taking care of a bunch of wusses. I’ve got beta things to do than be an entire planet’s babysitter.”

“But it’s your responsibility.” Aranea insisted, kicking Meenah’s leg lightly. “Your ancestor is depending on you to-”

“So go and tell her!” Meenah suddenly lashed out, sitting up to stare Aranea in the eye, their faces mere inches apart. “Go tell her what I’m planning and get her to drag me back to that palace and clam me up there for the rest of my life. Or,” She said, shifting her gaze to Aranea’s left eye, with her eight irises staring back at her, “Just make me go back. Use your dumb power and make me waltz right back and be a happy little heiress.”

“I can’t do that.” Aranea said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “How many times have I told you? My powers don’t work on highbloods.”

Meenah groaned and flopped back down. “Not the point, Serket.”

“Besides,” Aranea continued, looking back out over the roof as she folded her hands in her lap. “I wouldn’t do that even if I could. And I won’t tell the Empress either.”

“…Yeah, I know.” She couldn’t see Meenah grin her shark-toothed grin behind her, but she could feel it. “Love ya, Serket.”

Aranea scoffed a bit at that, not dignifying it with an answer. Meenah never wasted an opportunity to make fun of her. But that was just how she was- insensitive and thoughtless, just doing whatever she liked- and Aranea supposed that she would always be that way. That thought wasn’t so bad, she supposed, and as the two stared up at the pink moon and the sky full of stars, she began to smile a bit.

\---

After that, the phrase popped up more and more. When they entered the game and worked on coordinating a meet up, when they took down a boss monster together, when they succeeded in going God Tier, when she was complaining about their other friends, when she was just trying to shut Aranea up, it seemed like that little statement had a whole multitude of uses. And the more Meenah said it, the less inclined Aranea was to take it seriously. It was just another little quirk of Meenah’s, no different than her fish puns. It was just a quirk reserved for her, which was a nice enough thing on its own.

She didn’t mean to compare it to how Porrim said those words, nor had she mean to feel uneasy and disappointed when she did. The source of the disappointment was impossible to pinpoint, as much as she tried to analyze it, but in the end she accepted it as a sign that this matespritship was not going to last long.  She didn’t mean to keep her red romance a secret from Meenah either, but it just wasn’t something she wanted to talk about with her. That was odd, she supposed. They were best friends, and they always talked about their other friends’ relationships but… it felt strange when it came to her own. So she kept it to herself, even after it ended.

But that strange feeling didn’t go away, no matter how much time passed. Instead, it only grew each and every time Meenah threw out another ‘I love you’, spreading inside her like the spores of some strange and crippling fungus.

She had to ask her, Aranea knew. She had to ask Meenah what she meant by that. Oh sure, she’d be laughed at, but she’d been laughed at before. It didn’t bother her anywhere near as much as this uncertainty eating away at her.

And she would have, if Meenah hadn’t blown them all up first.

\---

After she died, Aranea found herself with a great deal of time to think. About her choices, her life, her friends, and most of all, Meenah. She waited for her best friend’s arrival, trying to be patient, filling the lonely hours with the sound of her own voice. Whenever the terrible confusion felt overwhelming, she talked to herself, trying to reach a deeper understanding of herself and the web of relationships she and her friends had woven on her own. Through dreambubble after dreambubble, she met new faces and was reunited with old friends and humored the occasional doomed offshoot of both, and each encounter was weighed against Meenah, as if she could calculate their relationship that way.

She did whatever she could to understand Meenah, and what they were to each other. To figure out the puzzle of this vanished friend, who had been so central to everything, and what she had thought of her.

And eventually, she understood.

There was nothing particularly exciting about the moment that it happened. There was no shattering of glasses, no hurling of plates, and she did not burst into tears or wail at the realization. She just finally, _finally_ knew the truth.

It was never a joke.

It was never a matter of flushed or pale, romantic or platonic.

Meenah just loved her.

And Aranea knew now. She loved Meenah in exactly that same way.

Her dreambubble began to shift around her. Underneath her feet was her hive’s roof. The pink moon shone in the sky of a night long since passed. Aranea sat down and kicked her feet over the edge, smiling and staring up at the moon as she waited for her friend in perfect silence.


End file.
